The Striking Price

The January Effect on Forecasts

I love January on Wall Street. It's like campaign season in Washington. Hope is everywhere and accountability is nowhere.

Sell-side banks and brokers puff about with reasons the market will advance, and why you should give them your money so as to benefit from this particular sector's outperformance or that stock's ability to rally even more than the market. Sometimes, the prognosticators are right, or lucky, but to paraphrase one...